


Five Times Mal Showed Someone a Fortune

by godsdaisiechain (preux)



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, five things, fortune
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 06:05:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5774284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preux/pseuds/godsdaisiechain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal may not know it, but he scatters fortune behind him.</p>
<p>For the Fan Flashworks challenge fortune.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Mal Showed Someone a Fortune

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elennare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elennare/gifts).



> Thanks to Elen for a great beta.

**Inara**  
When she was a child, someone took her mother aside—“There’s a fortune in that girl’s face.  House Madrassa takes only the best.”  
  
Mother had never been one to rush into anything.  She liked to plan, to weigh and consider.  An Academy had also made some oblique inquiries about Inara.   
  
Father had never taken much interest in her, not like he had in the others, all sons.  Daughters were a worry. So Inara was surprised, and deeply so, when he spoke up one evening. “We need to ensure that she has the best possible life, the happiest.  She is a darling girl, and Companions are women of status. We know nothing about this Academy.”  
  
So she went to House Madrassa, never knowing how good her fortune had been until she met a naked, screaming girl in the hold of a Firefly.    
  
 **Jayne**  
That Mal sure talked a good game, but he delivered an even better one.  Ten percent, right off the top. His own bunk and open access to the pantry. Kaylee’s cookin,’ better’n Ma’s some nights. And Zoe—she wouldn’t be willin’, that were certain, but she were good in a fight and never spoke to him like he were stupid, neither. It were better’n a fortune to someone like him, with Maddy’s damp lung to think on.   
  
He hadn’t of wanted to leave, but he was the biggest and the best with guns and bein’ a merc weren’t all bad. Jayne spent a lot of time getting Vera settled.  She was gonna like it here, where no one else could get a hand on her.  
  
 **Patience**  
It was good fortune, getting that much food at such a low price. And Mal, poor little Mal, he’d never know what hit him.  Too noble and innocent-seeming for his own good, that one.  And Badger was right—Mal was far too righteous and uppity.  Right ornery, in fact.  He needed to be taught a lesson.  It would be doing the rest of the Verse a favor.  
  
Later, her men dead, trapped under her favorite horse, Patience shrugged.  Maybe honor had its uses after all.  She still had her moon, and other men could be bought.  And Mal? Well, he showed her something: sometimes it was just as well to let bygones go by.   
  
 **Badger**  
Days later, the words still pricked at him. Very fine hat.  What kind of fool talks like that to his boss? “A fool with nothing to lose.”  
  
Badger looked up sharply.  It was the woman.  The one whose teeth he checked in front of Mal, tryin’ to make himself look fiercer.  
“And who gave you leave to speak?”   
  
The woman shrugged.  “I’m the only one here.  What kind of fool doesn’t answer the boss’s question?”  
  
“What in the Verse did I buy you for anyway?” Badger asked.  “You’re not pretty enough to hire out.”  
  
“Accounting,” said the woman, unfazed.  “You needed an accountant.  And that interview is going to cost you a fortune, businessman.”  
  
 **Saffron**  
Mal was right.  She had no people.  Not even a name, but she did have something.  
  
She had made herself a safe place some time before she became Yolanda, but after she forgot her real name; in the days when she foolishly thought that she could get better, that the voices would go away, that she could be a real girl again.  
  
The Academy hurt.  Worse than companion training, but it gave her skills.  Good skills. Skills worth more than the Lassiter, that was certain. Worth more than all Haymer’s memorabilia. Even worth more than Mal’s fortune in friendships.  
  
It only took a few days to escape from the Alliance, dupe an ident card, steal a ship.  Maybe this time farming and a few goats would be enough excitement for her.  


End file.
